Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Originally Posted by AetherMcLoud

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

We didn't explain this very well in the chat.

The answer we were trying to give was that "channels won't just get shorter and shorter the more haste you get." But a more complete answer is that hasted channels will get shorter until you get a whole additional tick, at which point the duration will go back up again. We don't want to do partial ticks or things like that because they encourage you to just recast the spell.

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Anyone else see fun situations coming where you have MF ticking 4x fully raidbuffed, then your shaman dies with his haste totem along him, and suddenly without realizing your MF ticks only 3 times and your whole rotation is off?

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Unless you're counting the time in your head, I can't really see how that would make too much of a difference. Lost damage, yes, but it'll be relatively the same DPET on the 3 ticks, shorter channel and all.

Assume 16.66666% haste, renew ticks 16.666% more often. The maths is complex, but basically you can think of it as having 1.166666 as many ticks. In this case, we had 6 ticks, and 1.16666*6 = 7. So we went from 6 ticks to 7 thanks to our haste. Yay.
We can back-calculate this to showing that renew ticks every 18/7=2.57 seconds, but that's not really important.
Total output is now 7*X, a decent upgrade of 16.66666% hps.

As you can see, haste seemingly scales well with over-time effects.

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The complex part happens when you don't have a haste rating that is perfectly rounded to a multiple of the amount of ticks. Numbers like 16.66666% is hard to get. You're much more likely to have, say the random number 26.12% haste.

Assuming 26.12% haste.
Again, renew ticks a bit more often. Basically, you get 26.12% more ticks given infinite cast time.
This means you get 6*1.2612=7.56 ticks off in the duration of a renew
The time between ticks are now 2.38 seconds inbetween (calculated as 1/(1+haste)*ticktimer)

But hold your horses. You can't have a half tick! So you get 7 ticks only. The additional 0.56 ticks are hmm.. in limbo.
This means you get just as many ticks from 26.12% as from having 16.6666% haste. Are the additional 10% haste just wasted?

Taking advantage of this requires you to not drop the buff of course. That's not a problem with SW:Pain, which conveniently is auto-refreshed. But it is a problem for renew, VT, DP and other over-time effects you might have present. Because, you basically have to clip them to get this "continue"-effect.

On the upside, that means clipping is no longer massively bad.
On the downside, the question of when to clip, and what becomes a major problem.
Letting that second runthrough of renew time out won't cost you much (0.3 seconds of a renew tick wasted).
Letting that first runthrough of renew time out will cost you much (1.32 seconds of a renew tick wasted).
Re-casting renew too early will bar you from taking advantage of that 8th tick in the second runthrough. Which might mean you have to keep renew up for three times in a row if you want optimal output.

Over time, this is a lot of HPS. And in terms of spriests, DPS.

I suspect shadowpriest addons will be even harder to live without in the future.

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Channels are simpler. They just stop after the last tick, unconditionally.
Assuming renew was a channeled spell, having 26.12% haste is slightly wasted, as you don't get an 8th tick ever.
But you do get to cast the 7 ticks faster.
So basically, you still get good value from haste. It's just a way to prevent you from having to cast mind flay every 1.8 seconds. You now get close to 3 seconds worth of mind flay no matter what.

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

I would quite like to see a talent to make each tick do more damage. That way, if you have three seconds it would do more damage than Mind Spikex2, but if you only have 1.5 seconds Mind Spike would do more damage instead of clipping.

I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Thanks for that Danner, that was a hell of a write up!

Surely the perfect solution for DoT affects then is to just apply the first tick at 0.00 seconds, i.e. as soon as the spell landed? Then there would never be any wasted time and you wouldn't have a problem trying to continue the effect.

I'm still confused about the channelled spell application though. Does that mean haste will give you 3 seconds of mind flay in 1.8 seconds? Would that not leave 1.1 seconds of doing nothing but casting the spell if you were still taken to the full three second duration? Or does it mean that Mindflay will always be 3 seconds, and you'll get more ticks based on haste? Under that situation, wouldn't that lead to the same problem, where you would have haste rating = 4 ticks but haste rating plus 1 equals 4 ticks, meaning plus 1 haste is wasted?

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

With Mind Flay having such a long Channel time, I'm assuming they'll do something to make it more powerful than Mind Spike, in a full rotation. IE, something like:

Mind Flay's damage is increased by x% for each of the Priest's Damage over Time spells on the target.

So that people don't just ignore Mind Flay all together.

They've said that MSp spam will do the same amount of damage as MF spam on a target with SW:P. The only thing that would stop someone from using MSp would be the mana cost, which is probably going to be more than MF. We'll still use MF because it is cheaper, plus it does increasing more damage per mana with more haste compared to MSp.

Originally Posted by Abuelo

Thanks for that Danner, that was a hell of a write up!

Surely the perfect solution for DoT affects then is to just apply the first tick at 0.00 seconds, i.e. as soon as the spell landed? Then there would never be any wasted time and you wouldn't have a problem trying to continue the effect.

I'm still confused about the channelled spell application though. Does that mean haste will give you 3 seconds of mind flay in 1.8 seconds? Would that not leave 1.1 seconds of doing nothing but casting the spell if you were still taken to the full three second duration? Or does it mean that Mindflay will always be 3 seconds, and you'll get more ticks based on haste? Under that situation, wouldn't that lead to the same problem, where you would have haste rating = 4 ticks but haste rating plus 1 equals 4 ticks, meaning plus 1 haste is wasted?

Sorry if I'm being blind and stupid

Actually, since clipping dots in Cata will just mean adding onto the duration, within a minute or two of the fight, you'll "notice" the extra tick.

The channeled duration has been stated by a blue post, but I'll summarize it for you. MF duration will be reduced until the point at which another tick will be added(33.33%), in which case, the duration will go back to 3s and will, again, reduce until another tick is added(66.67%). The lowest duration of MF will be ~2.26s, but is just a random fact that I through in there.

Originally Posted by rimmer

except they only announced how it was going to work approx 20 minutes before i posted that?

Still, the numbers will remain the same, why would clarifying the duration of the spell in between the ticks affect the % that extra ticks are added?

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Originally Posted by Abuelo

I'm still confused about the channelled spell application though. Does that mean haste will give you 3 seconds of mind flay in 1.8 seconds? Would that not leave 1.1 seconds of doing nothing but casting the spell if you were still taken to the full three second duration? Or does it mean that Mindflay will always be 3 seconds, and you'll get more ticks based on haste? Under that situation, wouldn't that lead to the same problem, where you would have haste rating = 4 ticks but haste rating plus 1 equals 4 ticks, meaning plus 1 haste is wasted?

Let's consider Mind Flay then. It's a 3 second channeled spell.
Assuming 0% haste you get 3 ticks from it; at 1, 2 and 3 seconds.
Total output is 3*X.

Assuming 100% haste, you get 6 ticks from it; at 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3 seconds.
Total output is 6*X.
Getting 100% haste means you basically do double damage in the same 3 seconds timeframe.
Basically you doubled your mindflay DPS by getting the ticks twice as often, but the spell still took 3 seconds to cast.

At 10% haste, you get your ticks at 0.91 seconds, ,1.82 second and 2.73 seconds. After 2.73 seconds, the spell ends (whereas a dot would continue until 3 seconds, doing nothing). Your mindflay at this stage does 10% more DPS, but it no longer takes 3 seconds to cast. It don't do more damage, it just does the damage faster.

At 33% haste, you get 4 ticks. That's pretty awesome. Your MF now takes 3 seconds to cast again, but deals 33% more DPS than you otherwise expect.

At 66% haste you get that 5th tick. You probably won't get to this point.

Think of the time extension as a bonus. Your channeled spells will no matter what scale 100% with haste. +1% haste means +1% damage. But If your haste is very high, you have to recast the channeled spell quite a lot, spending a whole lot og mana in the process. The channel mechanic will change so that you don't have to. This slows down the game a bit, whithout costing you the benefit from haste. Enjoy

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Thanks a lot Danner, makes everything a lot clearer! very much appreciated

It's also a damn clever work around from Blizzard. It'll be interesting to see how much Haste is still useful after 33% for other spells such as MB or Mind Spike or if 33% will be the optimal amount

More haste will be good, especially since you're getting those 4 ticks in faster. The hast "soft caps" are really just for dots and only when you can not get enough of a duration to get the extra tick.

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Originally Posted by fabian

More haste will be good, especially since you're getting those 4 ticks in faster. The hast "soft caps" are really just for dots and only when you can not get enough of a duration to get the extra tick.

Re: They slipped in a GAME CHANGER!

Originally Posted by fabian

More haste will be good, especially since you're getting those 4 ticks in faster. The hast "soft caps" are really just for dots and only when you can not get enough of a duration to get the extra tick.

I'm trying to understand where those "soft caps" for DoTs are coming from. Could you please be more specific?

Which is worse, ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
I hope shadowfiend will still be able to do damage in 3.1., it's my second "nuke" button next to Inner Focus!